Yesterday
I’m not usually here at this time it’s a strange early part of the morning when I’m normally buttoned up somewhere battling against the conditions with some thoughts of the day ahead. And yesterday I split off from his direction and the momentum of a walk to the shops kept the feelings locked up somewhat. But today I didn’t leave. I have things to sort out in the house and his list to tick through and though I get a proper hug it’s never enough. And for the first time he stepped out without me, without us and I watched the back of his head, with his rumpled hair, stride out in the rain. And then it came, a force containing years of love an aching like the first separation, when they took him in his cot for a night in the nurses room after you’d taken on five midwives. Remember? reminding them I couldn’t walk or lift and had been given the ‘disabled’ room because my pelvis had packed up and they needed to help me. So they took him away overnight and I can still remember the pain, the tearing, emotional pain as they trundled him out of sight and the slit of light round the door thinned as it clunked closed  and I sobbed and sobbed.  But exhaustion overtook me as I fell into a torn out sleep until the early morning click and quiet wheels as he was returned to me.  And though the spasms in my back crushed my movements and I felt caged in my own body, he was back at my side and that was all that mattered and I would meet his needs no matter what.

And just now as I raced up stairs to try to catch the last glimpse of him rustling up the road, it all roared back at me with an intensity of the moment itself and in ten minutes I spun through a compression of eleven years and I could smell our baby and an early morning house and wanted every microsecond back. And I lay in a tight ball till I knew he’d got there and stumbled through the jarring strangeness of this quiet empty home and wanted this to be a different moment with a holding though you’d wouldn’t feel all that I did. And a rushing because you had some awful meeting and the towels were wet on the bathroom floor and air was crisp with aftershave and you’d go and we’d joke with undisguised pride in the evening when he came back. And you’d both wind me up but secretly love the way it was. And I’d have shut the door as my baby walked away and after you’d gone I’d have cried fully but not as deep or as boundlessly as it pours and surges out of me now.

X

Today
This way is the way back from Sainsburys with the pushchair back in our ancient places, holding him invisibly and I can hear intruders behind me and I ignore them.
And I can breathe up here now although my foot hurts and right at this moment I go over on my ankle and am stuck with one working leg in an empty place and everything is wrong.
And the sun and sky is so low it hurts my eyes and as the feelings return I rest at the other bench. I want to be back in the old world packing for a trip North to deal with your dad but spend time with your mum and our son is snuggled up tight in the car and we have our stuff on the back seat (and a fly arrives to vomit on the day) as I think of us all heading off in our old life with a full tank and Vimto shoved in the drinks holder and your radio tapes blasting out the soundtrack to our world.

And it hurts
And I feel it 
And I want it all back

Can’t see the cathedral, the sky echoes a weak wash across my vision and everything is eaten up by the day. Bird struggles on the air, an unusual hard flapping breaks the moment.
A tiny moth fuzzes past me, blurred
and focussed.

My ankle throbs, I’m still here.
X